Source: Gilbert Carrasquillo / Getty
While some celebrities and artists with large platforms have been using their influence to inspire, inform, and entertain the public during social distancing, rapper/singer
M.I.A decided to go against the trend—and not in a good way.
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On Wednesday (Mar 25), the “Paper Planes” rapper took to
Twitter to give her views on the
pandemic from a hypothetical standpoint, saying that if the options to treat and rid the world of the disease involved “getting a chip or vaccine” that she would ultimately “choose death.”
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“If I have to choose the vaccine or chip I’m gonna choose death – YALA,” M.I.A wrote. “Have a healthy life. Don’t live in fear!”
After facing backlash, the
U.K.-bred rapper and activist tried to explain her stance on the subject, revealing in since deleted tweets that she chose her views based off of her experience getting her son vaccinated, while living in the United States, that almost landed him in the hospital.
“Yeah in America they made me [vaccinate] my child before the school admission,” she wrote, per
Billboard. “It was the hardest thing. To not have choice over this as a mother. I never wanna feel that again. He was so sick for 3 weeks then Docs had to pump him with antibiotics to reduce the fever from 3 vaxins.”
But fans weren’t buying it, leading for a few to call for
M.I.A to be canceled, to which she replied, “cancelling is irrelevant,” before asking fans to calm down and not be so stressed over news regarding the pandemic.
“Cancelling is irrelevant! Don’t panic you are ok. You are not gonna die. You can make it without stressing the medical systems. Just breathe. You are going to be ok. You can make it through without jumping in the frying pan. You are fine. All the vaccines you ve already had is enough to see you through.“
Although fans were going on the attack, M.I.A seemingly remained unfazed, reminding fans not to create trigger word out of a conversation before noting that construction workers were still at work, while everyone else is at home.
”Please don’t make breathing breath and air a trigger word rn. It’s stupid,” M.I.A said. “Breathe. For all living breathing species on earth. Respect the air we breathe. Lets talk about all these construction sites still going on rn. Does my word hurt u or all the dust Noise and pollution?”
Before concluding her thoughts on the subject, M.I.A added that despite everything going on, one thing is for certain and that is “change is inevitable.”
“Change has to come on all fronts. Environment food economic health care Education employment housing our consciousness.”
Check out some of the fans’ responses below.
